I strongly believe that it is very important to introduce children to the outdoors at a young age. As a child, I was very lucky to grow up near lakes, rivers and forests and learned to respect nature at a young age. A lot of kids today, especially ones in big cities are never taught to appreciate nature and I find that very sad.
I’m always delighted when people send in photos of fishing trips with their kids. Adam send in these photos of himself and his son fishing back in July. I cant wait till my son is old enough to explore new lakes with me!
I did a ton of perch fishing when I was growing up. Perch was always about quantity rather then quality though, and my catches rarely exeeded 10 inches in length. British waters are known for much bigger perch then we see in Canada though, just take a look at this 5lbs 15oz catch by Les Brown.
photo via Anglers Times
Thanks Mark!
John Marshe and I headed out to a small lake about 3 hours from Toronto, it’s one of John’s favorite spots to fish. The lake was comprised of several canals chained together, and the structure and vegitation could change drasticly from channel to channel. The rocky channels seemed to be the most productive and held a great deal of fish, whereas most of the weedy channels seemed to be so weedy and shallow that we couldn’t find even a single bucket mouth anywhere near the slop. Our intentions were to fish for musky, but after an hour or so of no success we decided to switch things up and target smallmouth instead. We caught quite a few in the 1-2 pound range and even spotted some 3-4 pounders cruising in the deep weeds.
John Marshe works with MeegsOnline, “Ontario’s Most Favorite Jig”, and a is frequent contributor to OFN.
Thanks again for taking me out on your boat and sharing with me some of your secret fishing spots and tactics.
Since musky season opened on the first Saturday of June, Team Fury has been hard at work each weekend chasing the fish of ten thousand casts. Contrary to past musky trips, locating fish was extremely difficult. We targeted musky on Lake Scugog which is located about an hour from Toronto, Ontario. While Scugog is very close to the largest city in Canada, it hold a surprisingly high number of musky, most of which average 30-35 inches in length.
Each of our visits to Scugog fell on inconsistent weather patterns. We found ourselves in the middle severe cold fronts on our first two visits, and ideal weather on our third visit. Despite the good weather we were only able to coax one small musky to follow our bait. The fourth visit again had ideal weather. This time I set out with our friend Bill who had put me on numerous musky last summer. I felt good about the weather conditions and I knew Bill’s wealth of knowledge chasing Scugog muskies would make the trip a success.
We headed out at 1am in grand Fury style and got to the launch well before sunrise. Since we were early we decided to get a couple hours sleep before we launched the boat at sunrise. We awoke a few hours later, missing the sunrise all together. We quickly got the boat in the water, hoping to make up for lost time. There were already several boats on the water, which was expected since this was the first day of bass season in the region. While the bass fishermen hugged the shallow shorelines looking for largemouth bass, we drifted in deeper water throwing baits for musky.
There wasn’t much excitement for the first hour or two and then I finally hooked into my first musky of the year, a 30 incher caught on one of my baits I had made the week before. Not long after I set the hook into something with some weight on it, and hauled in my first legal sized fish of the year which measure just under 37 inches in length. With two musky in the boat, Bill figured it was now his turn to get some action and pulled in a beautiful 19 inch largemouth bass.
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You may have been told that you get wiser as you get older, but that’s not always the case. Four people were fined nearly $3,500, $872 each, for being over the legal limit of perch. 116 fish over the limit!
Those charged were John C. Hansen, 52, and Lucille V. Hansen, 50, both of Whitehall, Wis., and Wallace R. Mortenson, 67, and Marian R. Mortenson, 65, both of Maple Grove.
The incident happened Oct. 16, when State Conservation Officer Dan Perron was following up on a report of poaching. Perron said he saw the two men cleaning fish and saw more fish in a pot and in a freezer.
The Hansens had 196 perch between them, or 116 fish over the limit. The Mortensons had 182 perch, or 102 over the limit. The perch limit in Minnesota is 20 perch daily and 40 in possession per person.
There is no excuse for poaching, but sure enough they’ve got one.
“They said the fish were really biting and they just kept fishing, and they would use all the fish they take and nothing would go to waste,” said Perron. “They all said they were sorry and were wrong to do it.”
